As usual, John Gruber has a considered view of the announcements.
I am always glad to read his opinions and then to read other considered opinions that push back.
Some folks will look at that list and say the iPhones 11 Pro aren’t really “pro”. I look at that list and say the regular iPhone 11 is almost just as “pro” at significantly lower prices. This is a very different dynamic between pro and non-pro models compared to MacBooks, Mac desktops, and iPads, where the pro models have very obvious performance differences. The iPhone is just a different product.
Do you know a teenager? Were you one, once? There’s that day when they are suddenly, physically or mentally, less a child. Maybe they grew four inches in a few weeks or their response to a question is much deeper than even the other adults in the room or a slight grievance becomes the end of the world with tears and heaving breaths.
Mobile computing is in its teens right now — not quite fully mature but capable of leaps that are beyond most “adult” products. So while the growth curves of the iPhone “pleb” and “pro” models are separate they arc upwards in a manner that mature systems can only dream of. If a desktop computer manufacturer could show the same performance gain curves as an iPhone or Pixel or Galaxy, they would dominate. The differentiating factors are slight at this moment but diverging. There should be no surprise if the curve for the next round flattens for the entry-level product (possibly with a larger-than-normal price drop) and maintains the growth rate for the top-tier (with the corresponding price).
Tick-tock. Breathe in; products that gather in users for price or features. Breathe out explosively; large jumps in performance for both lines as their features converge for a cycle.
Don’t forget that the Apple employees must build these new features for presentation. As tghe two lines diverge, it becomes more difficult to maintain programmatic parity.
Deep Fusion: how will it differ from Night Mode. I’ll hazard that Night Mode operates in the camera mode, with the corresponding live view and Deep Fusion is a Photos app option where the computation takes more time to be more realistic. After all, deep takes time to reach.